Guy Fincham
Breathwork and mental health researcher whose meta-analysis contains the most useful sentence in the field, and it is a warning.
Who they are
Fincham works at Sussex on breathing interventions and their effects on mental health. The 2023 meta-analysis pooled randomised controlled trials of breathwork against non-breathwork controls.
It found a positive result and then spent its conclusion on why the result should be held lightly.
Key papers
Fincham, G. W., Strauss, C., Montero-Marín, J., & Cavanagh, K. (2023). Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised-controlled trials. Scientific Reports, 13, 432.
Key ideas
Twelve randomised trials on self-reported stress, 785 adults, a small-to-medium effect favouring breathwork. Anxiety and depressive symptoms showed similar sizes across larger sets of trials.
Most included studies were judged at moderate risk of bias.
The authors urge caution and advocate for low risk-of-bias designs in order to avoid a miscalibration between hype and evidence. The literature search closed in February 2022, so the 2023 Stanford trial is not among the studies included.
Concepts on this site
Sources
- doi:10.1038/s41598-022-27247-y